I got a lot of emails yesterday wondering about my reaction to the Star-Advertisers announcement of their new paywall for digital content.
Well, here’s one prediction: There are going to be some unhappy local folks when they figure out that they are being asked to pay as much as twelve times more than mainlanders for the same digital subscriptions.
Yup. The S-A is quoting $9.95 a month for digital-only subscriptions for Hawaii residents, but enter a mainland zip code and discover an unadvertised price break that drops the cost to $1.95 a month or $10 for the year.
No wonder the newspaper’s announcement yesterday sounded a little defensive. The long editorial column announcing the move didn’t have any of the relevant details, like prices and a clear explanation of what is included in the “premium content” that is becoming “subscription only”.
And I noticed that comments were turned off, so readers couldn’t sound off on the announcement.
That doesn’t signal a whole lot of confidence, or so it seems to me.
So, a day later, there’s more information.
Full access, including the print and digital editions: $19.95 a month (presumably $239.40 per year, unless there’s an annual price break). I don’t know if I would call this the “best value,” as the S-A advertising proclaims.
$9.95 a month for a digital-only subscription for Hawaii subscribers
$50 a year “special” price for new local digital-only suscribers
$1.95 per month or $10 a year for a digital subscription for mainland subscribers
Unfortunately, the “free with your subscription to the paper” idea doesn’t work, because I’m sure few subscribers are paying that premium $240 a year price, with all of the “specials” that have floated around.
Here’s the list of what readers will continue to get for free.
• Breaking News
• Website Front Page
• Weather
• AP Sports
• Section Fronts – Sports, Business, News, Editorial, Feature, Weather
• Event Calendars
• Honolulu Pulse – including tgif
• Photo Galleries
• Blogs
• Classifieds
• Travel
• Obituaries
• Traffic
• Breaking News app for your mobile device
Hmmmm. I think $50 per year isn’t unreasonable. But I’m not sure there’s enough “premium” content to sustain the higher rates. I suppose we’ll soon see.
Oh, one more thing. In order to subscribe, you will have to actively agree to their “terms of service.” I suppose that’s more honest than hiding them in a footnote that browsers are presumed to have read and agreed to.
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the WSJ uses a paywall, but anyone can easily get around it by just Googling the headline for the article. it pops right up in all its free glory.
So if they are going to let the Google bots into their site (which i’d argue they are going to lest they die a slow death in silo), there should be an easy backdoor fix… if you really need to get to their premium content.
Uh, that Google workaround doesn’t always work at WSJ, actually.
Well one benefit of the firewall could be that it cuts down the number of mainland trolls in the comments section.
All this passionate discussion to me says the SA or the local paper anywhere is closer to the hearts of many than some of us are willing to admit……
Mighty unimpressed.
If this had happened when Buck Buchwach was in charge of The Advertiser, he would have had a blockbuster Sunday edition when proposed fees were announced.
Instead, Mr. Francis offered us a piece of almost nothing. We are being taken for granted, for sure.
To compare his weak hybrid with the NY Times is laughable. I imagine the same might apply to the Dallas Morning News, though I have not seen it for a decade or more.
Well, Mr. Clark, that “piece of almost nothing” still helps pay his 7-figure salary.
Hugh, and others,
There still will be a free site for comprehensive high school sports coverage. Go to http://www.ScoringLive.com
It’s professional quality stuff, with a staff made up entirely of ex-Advertiser workers …
Well, I think it’s a bit steep if the online content is going to remain the same. It’s anything but premium, imho.
Today there were many comments in the LTE section because the SAd had disallowed comments on the article about the pay wall. Tonight, most if not all are deleted & some members banned. Guess that’s one way to get rid of the opposition, eh? Now they’ll be free to promote SSM, Rail, and paving over Oahu’s farmland with cookie-cutter houses with little or no opposition whatsoever.
Thank you for that.
I thought my computer was acting funny when I was blocked and my identity erased (My posts were posting as “guest”)
I got blocked for alluding it to Orwellian fiction.
Free Press stifling dialogue.
Sickening abuse of monopoly power.
I read the virtual SA on my iPad today and was pleasantly surprised. Photos are clearer and text is zoomable. No search or copy features, but mostly a nice upgrade from the dead-tree edition. Not sure I would feel the same reading it on a computer.
I guess when my print sub comes up for renewal I will opt for digital only if it is cheaper.
I wanted to add that, for all its faults, I think we are better off still having at least one mainstream local paper than not. I hope more people will be willing to pay. On the other hand, the pay wall might also help the competition.
Good bye Star Advertiser, you are just not worth the price!
You can count me as one who had all my comments (EVER!) erased and was banned for being critical of the Star-Advertiser yesterday. I was not in violation of their terms of service.
I was also their most “liked” commenter with ~26,000 likes.
It is very sad what the Star-Advertiser has become, and their new policy of charging mainland readers far less than local readers is offensive.
I am done with them, and will rely on Google News for nation news and websites like KHON, KITV the Civil Beat for local news. Also Ian’s wonderful blog as well as David Shapiro’s too.
Kalaheo,
I was banned from the S-A because I was making blasphemous arguments in debates with Christian fundamentalists. At the time, I was re-reading Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason” and my arguments closely followed Paine’s, both in terms of logic and tone.
My comments were in response to ludicrous comments by rightwingers, mostly on threads dealing with civil unions. Had the charge against me been plagiarism, I would have pled guilty. My remarks were no more “off-topic than the silly rightwing Christian comments to which I was responding, yet the Christian comments were allowed to remain.
It was an annoying reminder that there are “gatekeepers” deciding what speech is allowed and which is to be suppressed. The S-A is often arbitrary in whose comments they ban and which they allow to remain. I get a sense that no one wants the job, so whoever takes it on is granted total freedom to act according to their personal pet peeves and mood of the moment.
I eventually sent transcripts of my banned comments to a reporter I know. He intervened for me and I was allowed to re-enter the digital world of active citizenship.
When the only daily “newspaper” has a “natural monopoly” over civil discourse, does that natural monopoly create obligations upon them to allow “free speech” within well-defined, posted standards?
Me too!
I emailed customer service, but got no answer.
I guess I shouldn’t feel that bad.
I only had ~300.
You sure it’s not that “like-fisher” A Yahoo User?
I think we were off topic?
I wasn’t the “click like” guy 🙂 I posted as kalaheo.
Kalaheo,
I suspect there are two sides to the story. Lots of guilty people sit before the judge and pledge…”not guilty”. In any event, the SA site and all sites (like this one) can remove anything at anytime.
Oh, I know there are two sides, however, until yesterday, I had never had a comment pulled in 2200 posts, then yesterday EVERY comment I had ever made got deleted.
I know it’s their paper to run as they see fit, but to invite comments and then arbitrarily delete them is extremely disrespectful to their readers.
Today a lot more comments were pulled. Quite a few people (me included) were commenting on several articles about the upcoming charges for ‘premium’ content and, of course, all those comments are deleted by now.
I understand that not everything is always suitable to say, and in some situations they need to remove some comments but in this case it’s just ridiculous. It was nothing but a few people leaving reactions/complaints to the upcoming charges. They should change their blue star into a red one if you ask me, it would fit them better.
I noticed the same complaints errr….”comments” about charging left on nearly every article posted the other day……and you are dismayed you were banned?? Grow up. Now I see for the cost of one piece of luggage to Hilo on Hawaiian I get the SA full access…..deal is looking better everyday.
If you paying $10/yr for digital access to the Star-Advertiser, then you must live on the mainland.
It’s $50/yr if you actually live here.
How is it a “better deal” if you are paying $50/yr for something that was free? Is the Star-Advertiser going to increase the quality of their news coverage?
Kalaheo,
Bitch and moan to your hearts content, but the solution to your angst is simple, don’t buy it. Go away, take your free business elsewhere.
I have to agree. I want to have a daily newspaper and will support it, despite its flaws. And the expectation of free news has a limited life span. Not sustainable.
Ian – I respectfully disagree. I am pretty horrified at what the “new” Star-Advertiser has become.
Do you know that to this day, they never reported on Councilman Nestor Garcia’s no-show, do-nothing $60,000/yr job with a pro-rail group while being the swing vote that kept rail alive?
There are numerous examples of them refusing to report on stories, but that is the most egregious one recently. I’d like to have a daily paper too, but I think the new Star-Advertiser has morphed into an organ of our local political power.
These days, I watch KHON for local news and because Joe Moore is so entertaining, and Read the civil beat for important goings on. The national news is well covered by numerous sources, but I usually check google news and whatever I miss, I usually hear about on the Daily Show.
If the Star-Advertiser hadn’t lost it’s journalistic way, I would support it, but I don’t approve of what they have become… Except for David Shapiro, that man is a national treasure!
Relax, I’ve already gone away from the Star-Advertiser and not going back.
I know there is no law against hypocrisy, but they run a lot of stories about other businesses raising their prices and don’t deleted and ban you for criticizing those price increases.
It is their paper to run as they see fit. I don’t approve of their journalistic ethics, and won’t be paying for their product.
And I would love it if it were possible to cancel delivery of Midweek!
It wasn’t the fact of the imposition of the fee, but the inability to comment that made it frustrating.
For the major daily paper to stifle comments or feedback seems too powerful.
All the free users will probably be so and remain so.
But why go through the aggressive threat of banning all of them and their comments?
It’s too high handed for a monopolistic power.
And the fact is that no one knows what the premium content will be.
So there should be a place for discussion.
Especially if it’s labeled a liberal paper.
I thought an ideal was an informed populace, not a segregated populace with those that can afford news.
Thank you for the forum and opportunity to speak, where the monopoly wouldn’t have it.
I just looked and the Star-Adveriser seem fine with people raising heck in the comments section about Hawaiian’s baggage fee increase.
It just their own business that is strictly off limits.
I also looked, and there is nothing in their terms of service about criticizing the Star-Advertiser being a bannable offense, or any offense for that matter.
Took a run through “terms of service,” and found this in the last paragraph. So a one-year subscription rate is really at the whim of Mr. Francis?
The publisher reserves the right to change subscription rates during the term of a subscription upon 28 days’ notice. This notice may be mailed to the subscriber, by notice contained in the newspaper, or otherwise. Subscription rate changes may be implemented by changing the duration of the subscription.
C’mon Kalaheo….tell em what you did to get banned…..you know…..
I already told you. I was critical of their new paywall policy. That is all. Really.
If they hadn’t deleted my entire account and posting history, I’d show you.
I never used foul language, called names, or violated any of their written policy. I never had a single post pulled in 2200 posting, although I did flag a few offensive ones myself.
You are welcome to not believe me, but my comment was no different than the ones they perfectly okay with people saying about Hawaiian and their bag fee increase.
I have your posts if you want to see them – they were just gone from the SAd site, not Disqus. Can email them or post them here, up to you.
I would love to get some of those back! When I look in Discus, I can only see the comments that I “liked” and a couple from those rare times I commented on ‘Pulse’ article.
Anything else appears to be obliterated.
I can’t reply to your response below, but if you email me jayen 2 you at yahoo (take out spaces) i’ll send you what i have.
you have a hard time leavin….you’ve posted 8 comments sayin how done you are with the SA…..just sayin,
No, I only posted that once… well twice, I guess.
If you would prefer I ignore your questions to me in the future, I will certainly try to respect that, although it might be easier to just not ask me questions.
In defense of kalaheo – I read all of the posts, including others who were not happy with the ‘paywall for what we’re getting,’ and it’s disingenuous that they call it ‘premium content’ when it clearly has not been. Perhaps that will change, who knows?
I will re-subscribe when I get to the mainland in October, but I don’t know that I will be able to post from Hawaii under that login – we’ll see.
RE: Unpredictable moderators: I was banned under this SN a few months back for commenting, truthfully, on a rape article. I had to plea my case and use my ‘real’ name in order to be let back on. Even though the statement I made wasn’t crude in the least, it was too true to be in print, obviously.